True, but we picked up Trevor Sinclair after he spent 2 seasons stagnating in the second tier. He genuinely was an excellent player.
Tbh, I'm not especially excited by Joe Allen, or more to the point, I'm not sure he's what we need. However, I think he is a very decent Prem level player (or was last I saw him). As others have said, if he's bought alongside someone else, then he'll probably be a solid squad booster. We seem, as a general rule, be exasperated by the thought of signing solid, proven PL players, but get reasonably excited when we sign cheapish overseas players many of us have never heard of, such as Nordtveit, Feghouli, Rat, Zaza (off the top of my head), many of which flop and potentially won't be as effective as someone like Joe Allen, Hayden, or Shelvey. I guess the issue is that we know that they're not "next level".